


Acceptance

by uumuu



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-26 05:27:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4991998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lalwen goes to meet Maedhros for the first time after Thangorodrim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acceptance

Hoarfrost crunched under their feet, as they crossed the settlement towards the lake. It was a sound Lalwen found reassuring and odious at the same time. The ice on the Helcaraxë had rung out like marble under their feet – the tramping of thousands of feet echoing into nothingness – except when it cracked, and then it was most of the time too late. 

Maglor led her in silence to a large hut built half on the shore and half on the lake.

“He's here,” he said, motioning for her to go on on her own. 

She didn't say anything in response, didn't spare a glance for him either, and walked on, gripping the railing not so much for balance, but as if the wood's solidity could have helped her sort through the turmoil of her thoughts.

She had refused to see Maedhros after Fingon had brought him back, and later too, when he had begun recovering. She had claimed anger and resentment as excuses to avoid coming face to face with him. To herself, she could admit that she couldn't have faced the wreckage her brother had described to her. 

She had known Maedhros as a child. They were the same age; they had played and laughed together, at times. Happy times, when the worst that could happen to them had been scratches and bumps.

She walked up the shallow staircase, to the door Maglor had directed her towards, the second to her left. She stood before it – she could hear Maglor's light footsteps as he walked away – and took several deep breaths, though she knew she would never be fully ready for the encounter. 

Maedhros wasn't just healed now. He had resumed his role as a King as if he had never been gone. He had been out of the encampment too, leading short sallies, for show. He held a public council lasting the whole morning once a week. 

Some said that his recovery had been too quick, too thorough.

Lalwen took one last deep, slow breath, knocked and opened the door. Maedhros stood stooping in front of a large mirror mounted on the right hand wall of the small room, holding a pair of scissors in his only hand. Lalwen had a split second to take in the sight of his maimed arm, the abrupt termination just below the elbow, before he lowered the other one and turned towards her, his movements jerky. 

Maitimo had been tall, but not lanky. The man who smiled at her seemed twice as tall as what she remembered for being unnaturally thin. There were many descriptions of him among the people. The most charitable compared him to a shattered porcelain doll, clumsily glued back together. Lalwen could now concur with how her brother had described him. Fingolfin had said Maedhros was like a mountain that had been savagely eroded, but whose core had resisted, unscathed, and didn't show any signs of crumbling yet.

“Lalwendë,” he called, his voice trailing on each syllable as if he had to re-learn the sound of the name. 

His voice, strong but pleasant, was the one Lalwen remembered, even coming from a scarred face.

He beckoned her in. She steadied herself and stepped inside, slowly closing the door behind her, her hand lingering on the knob even after it had clicked shut.

Maedhros turned towards the mirror again. “It is good to see you again.”

“I didn't want to...disturb you, while you healed,” she stammered.

He gave a small lop-sided smirk. “I appreciate it. Pain demands to be felt. And I did. I did. I took it all. But it wasn't enough. It was never enough,” he said, sounding almost contemplative. Or rueful. 

“What-...what did they -”

Maedhros's mouth instantly shut to a grim line. He shook his head. Lalwen nodded, relieved. She had uttered the question without properly thinking, and was grateful for his refusal and the mercy, or pity, that came with it. 

“You don't need to know.”

He lifted the scissors again, and resumed cutting his hair. 

“Why are you cutting your hair?” Lalwen asked after a few snaps. She had tried to make her tone neutral, but it was probably impossible for him not to infer from the words that he shouldn't have been doing it.

He paused again, and peered at her over his shoulder. “My brothers say I should let it grow back. I don't want to.”

“Why?”

“I don't feel the need to hide the scars. I'm not ashamed of them.” 

Lalwen nodded in silence, but realised he was waiting for her to say something, to validate him. “Of course.”

“...and -” he waved his maimed arm, lowering his voice to a soft whisper, “- you know.”

Lalwen didn't immediately understand what he referred to. She did when her eyes followed the direction of his gaze, and fixed on his hair.

“Let me help you.”

He considered her offer, mistrustful, but she pretended not to notice, holding out her right hand, and he gave in. He passed her the scissors, and sat down on the chair in front of the dressing table – the only chair in the room. Lalwen studied his scalp. She lifted a badly snipped lock, and was dismayed to see a patch of scarred skin where hair didn't grow. She felt a knot of revulsion rise in her stomach, but she did her best to ignore it, held the lock, and cut.

The memory – of them, as children, playing in one of the gardens of the Royal Palace – snuck in through the cracks of her discomfort. Maitimo had knocked her flower crown off of her head, causing the braid coiled around the top of her head to come undone at the same time, and she had pounced on him, yanking on his hair until Fëanáro had come running at the sound of his screams.

He had been gentle. He always had been with his children. He had delicately pried her away from him. Comforted Maitimo. Braided his hair again. 

A pang of longing assailed her, not for Fëanáro, but for all that could have been, and all that been lost, and all that would never be. 

“What do you intend to do now?” she asked, snipping at those once-famed copper locks, leveling them to the best of her ability. 

“...fulfill the Oath,” Maitimo curtly said. “But I will pass the kingship to your brother.”

Lalwen looked up in surprise, meeting his eyes in the mirror. “Why?”

Maedhros grimaced. “You weren't supposed to cross. Now you have to bear the burden of it, too.”

Lalwen's gaze hardened, and she wanted to scream that they had already borne a more than adequate burden. But Maedhros's gaze was even colder. “...do you hate Fingon?”

Maedhros took some time to reply, his eyes crinkling with frustration, with something that blazed desperate in them. “Yes,” he breathed out at length. “I asked him to kill me.” He abruptly slammed his fist against the table, making it rattle. Lalwen started, clutching the scissors in her right hand, thankfully far from his head. Maedhros gritted his teeth and exhaled noisily through his nose. “I wouldn't have had to face this,” he said then - his voice a mere hiss - pointing to his left. 

Lalwen turned. Her eyes scanned the dim corner of the hut, and with some difficulty made out the few items that hid there, as if bashful of their own existence. Few of them. All that was left of Fëanáro. The crown, his ecet, a piece of charred armour, resting over a tall square chest decorated with his emblem, whose colourful design had the same effect of a slap in the face. The people who had died on the ice had left nothing behind. She wondered, for the first time, if it could count as a blessing.

When she looked forward again, Maedhros's eyes were glazed with tears that wouldn't fall. Even with the scars, the grief and with his hair shorn, he reminded her a lot of the child she had just seen again in her mind's eye. 

“I can't take it, Lalwendë,” he whined. “How am I supposed to live without Father. How -” his voice hitched and died. He threw his head back, and the scar puckering the skin of his neck stretching out to reveal all its ugliness. 

Lalwen stared at it. “We all lost someone. Accepting death is not easy.”

“...you used to blame Father for grieving.” 

“We were...innocent, and we couldn't understand.”

Maedhros scoffed, lifting his head again, and his expression turned to scorn. “Excuses,” he said, and fell silent. He didn't speak again after that, and Lalwen thought it was for the best. 

She resumed cutting his hair, trying not to think of what he had said, and pushing the nagging feeling that she _should_ have tried to comfort him out of her mind. 

She could have found no words of comfort. There could have been none even if all she had been able to feel for Fëanáro hadn't been rancour. But now she truly understood. What had pulled Maedhros through wasn't his determination, resilience, or the lingering blessings of Aman, but indifference to anything that might happen, because the absolute worst had already happened, and couldn't be remedied. Because whatever he did, his father wouldn't be there to hold him.

**Author's Note:**

> An ecet is, in Tolkien's own words (quoted from Unfinished Tales), a 'short stabbing sword with a broad blade, pointed and two-edged, from a foot to one and a half feet long'.


End file.
